


Catch and Release

by orphan_account



Series: Asymmetry [2]
Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 05:31:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1457491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This will always be a contention point between them - their closeness, their separateness, their inability to survive both with or without each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch and Release

"Hikaru?"

There, up ahead: his brother, sitting in the branches of the oak tree outside their balcony. Hikaru is facing away, still in his school uniform, bits of bark clinging carelessly to his hair, a rather conspicuous rip in one trouser leg showing a pale, white slip of thigh.

Kaoru sighs, moves forward awkwardly on his crutches. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Hikaru says.

"You’ve torn your uniform again."

"Claire will get me another one."

It hasn’t escaped Kaoru’s notice that Hikaru has chosen the one place where Kaoru cannot currently follow. Every now and then, Hikaru does this: clams up, retreats, grows murky and distant. It isn’t normally something Kaoru minds - he’s used to Hikaru’s particular brand of childishness now - but there’s a new thread of tension in the muscle of Hikaru’s shoulders. Some unprecedented crisis he’s wrestling with.

"Hey," Kaoru says. He really wishes he could see his brother’s face. "This wasn’t your fault, you know."

"I know it wasn’t my fault," Hikaru snaps back.

"Then come inside."

Hikaru doesn’t answer.

It’s hot, the sun lancing straight into Kaoru’s eyes. Summer again. Claire will be closing the shutters downstairs. The days will be lengthening, the grass with its fresh, green smell, the chlorine scent in everyone’s hair.

Hikaru’s back is dappled with blocks of shadow, a solid, alien, unknowable thing.

\--

They’ve been hurt before, but never really like this.

There have been the occasional scuffles in the schoolyard; not a thing that should really happen at a place like Ouran, but boys will be boys and money generally tends to make things worse. Bodyguards have been involved in the past. Journalists.

They’ve had their fair collection of bruises, scrapes, sprained ankles, fractures, dislocated joints.

But they have always had them together. Mostly, sitting in the car on their way home from school, wearing symmetrical grins: their knuckles scuffed, an eye or two possibly swollen, their knees touching, wordlessly reliving the fight in their minds, wordlessly anticipating Claire’s disapproval, always wordless, their knowledge of each other so complete that it sang like a drug in their veins.

Always together, always intentional. The world always in the palm of their hand.

Always in control.

Never like this.

\--

"You shouldn’t go back to school until you’re better," their mother says. "I insist."

Hikaru is hovering somewhere in the periphery. Kaoru smiles, startled a little by the way their mother’s hand has landed on his. She’d emerged in the course of the night, hair frizzy from the rain, clothes wrinkled slightly from her trip and smelling like airplane food. An unexpected apparition.

Hikaru has crossed his arms, looking sullen. "Then I’m not going back either."

"There’s no reason why you should stay at home. Claire and Angela can help Kaoru get around."

"If Kaoru’s not going, then I’m not going."

An indulgent tilt goes into their mother’s mouth. "The two of you aren't joined at the hip, you know."

It’s not exactly the right thing to say. Hikaru bristles, hostility coming off him in waves.

"I know we’re not fucking joined at - "

"Hikaru," Kaoru interrupts, before things get out of hand. "Can you get me a glass of juice?"

Hikaru glares at him.

"Please," Kaoru says. "I’d do it myself, but I can’t."

There is a wistful expression on their mother’s face as Hikaru exits the room. The palm of her hand where it rests upon Kaoru’s is soft and dry, her nails chipped and stained with ink; she catches Kaoru looking.

"I’m working again," she explains, smiling. "Your uncle was doing a terrible job with the factory, and his designs - well. Suboptimal, let’s just say."

"I thought you’d given all of that up."

"Your father asked me to, when we married. It’s different now."

"Are you - " He stops, the word suddenly stuck in his throat. "You and Dad, are you getting - "

"Maybe. We haven’t talked about it."

"Oh."

His mother tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. It’s something she hasn’t done ever since they were children; it startles him.

"I worry so much," she says at last, quietly. "You and Hikaru - I know I haven’t been a good mother to you two. I was so unhappy, so trapped in my own little world, I never paid the slightest attention to anything outside of it. I didn’t even realise how suffocating it was, how much it affected the people around me." She cups his cheek, a tender gesture, then lets go. "I always told myself that, because you were twins, it was alright. That you’d always have each other. That even without me, you wouldn’t be lonely."

"Mum - "

"But you won’t be together forever. You know that, Kaoru, don’t you?"

A knot has trapped itself in Kaoru’s throat. "I know."

They sit in silence for a while. A hollowness is opening up in Kaoru’s stomach, a dull hurt that expands behind his ribs.

Suddenly, the door behind them closes; then Hikaru’s footsteps, moving away.

\--

The next morning, very early: a ripple of the mattress, Hikaru’s bare feet on the bedroom floor.

Kaoru peels his eyes open reluctantly. It’s a Wednesday. It’s barely six in the morning. Only the maids are ever awake at this ungodly hour, on the days when they are not going to school. "Hikaru?"

"Go back to sleep."

Hikaru is getting dressed. In the half-light seeping in through the blinds he looks ghostly, the creamy skin of his back bleached pale.

"What are you doing?" Kaoru manages. "Why are you - are you going to school?"

"Duh."

"Wait. I thought - "

"Go back to sleep," Hikaru says again, harsh.

Kaoru reaches out on instinct, grabs at his brother’s wrist. Hikaru isn’t the only one with a stubborn streak in him. "Wait."

"Kaoru, what are you - "

He tugs him down. He is successful only because Hikaru is unprepared; he puts his hands into his brother’s sleep-mussed hair, holds him in place, kisses him on the mouth.

Kaoru means it as their usual kiss, the one they give each other daily for reassurance: _I will be here. I love you. I promise._

But this time Hikaru makes a strangled sound and pulls away.

They stare at each other from across the mattress, stunned. One beat. And then two.

"Don’t," Hikaru says at last. There’s a strange, panicked note in his voice. "Don’t do that."

"But - "

"Just _don’t_ , Kaoru, alright?"

The room, once Hikaru has gone, feels cold. Kaoru pulls himself onto his brother’s side of the mattress, curling himself into the residual heat of Hikaru’s body; it soothes him, lends him a sense of certainty, a thing he’s afraid now that they’ve lost.

\--

"Are you and Hikaru fighting again?"

It’s Claire - or maybe it is Angela. Perhaps hypocritically, Kaoru has never bothered trying to tell them apart.

"Hn," he says.

They are trying to get down the stairs. Getting down the stairs for Kaoru, while still on crutches, is more a test of patience than of physical strength. He is tempted more than once to just slide down the banister, but Claire - if it is indeed Claire - would probably brain him with a slipper.

"There’s nothing wrong with fighting," Claire ventures after a while. "I fight with Angela all the time."

"About what?"

"Oh, anything. Chores. Boys. Clothes. Angela steals mine, you see. The clothes, I mean, not the boys."

Kaoru blinks at her. "You mean, you don’t share?"

"We used to," Claire says brightly. "But then we both started dating. Sharing clothes just made things too confusing in the end." She stretches out a hand, steadies him as they reach the bottom of the stairs. "What would you like for morning tea?"

"But - didn’t it bother you?"

Claire stops and looks at him, assessing. 

Then she smiles. "It did, at first. That’s the thing with being twins, isn’t it? First you have to come to terms with how close you are, then you have to come to terms with how distant you will become. Nobody else really understands how hard it is. You spend your whole life depending on somebody and then, suddenly, you have to let them go. You have to find a way to start all over."

"I couldn’t," Kaoru says. His chest aches. "I wouldn’t be able to."

"You’ll learn."

\--

The storm arrives in the mid-afternoon. Kaoru sits on their bed, a book propped open in his lap, too busy trying to listen for Hikaru’s footsteps on the staircase to pay any serious attention to it.

Hikaru comes back a little after five.

He brings the smell of the rain into their room: a musty, lightning scent, instantly recognisable. His wet hair is plastered to his forehead. He’s soaked from head to toe, tracking a trail of mud all over the carpet, school bag dripping before he tosses it into the corner with an unpleasant squelching noise. All in all, a walking disaster.

Kaoru stares incredulously. "Jesus."

Hikaru ignores him, starts heading for the bathroom.

_Not good enough_ , Kaoru thinks. As Hikaru passes him he hooks a finger firmly into Hikaru’s belt-loop, dragging him to an unsteady halt.

"Why are you angry with me?"

Hikaru does look at him then, a surprised little dart of a glance. "I’m not."

"Then why are you being such a dick?"

"I’m _not_ \- "

"You are." Kaoru tugs. "Sit down."

"I’m soaked."

"So what, we’ll change the sheets."

"No, I mean - " Hikaru’s hands have both clenched into fists, but he doesn’t make a move to draw away. "I mean, I’m wet, and I’ll get you wet. And then you’ll - " He stops. "Look, never mind. I need to shower."

"Come here," Kaoru says.

Hikaru hesitates, shoulders stiff as a board. "Kaoru - "

"Come here," Kaoru says again.

He sees the exact moment when Hikaru gives in. Capitulates. It’s a breathtaking thing, all the resistance leaching out of Hikaru's body, the way he half-topples into Kaoru’s lap; the angle is awkward and when their mouths meet it’s more teeth than anything, rainwater getting everywhere, but Kaoru is so relieved that he doesn’t mind.

"I’m sorry," Hikaru mumbles. He rests his forehead against Kaoru’s own. "I just - I didn’t expect - "

"It wasn’t your fault."

"I know," Hikaru says. "I _know_. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less."

Kaoru kisses him again. This will always be a contention point between them - their closeness, their separateness, their inability to survive both with or without each other; their lack of control over the universe. The possibility, always there, that one of them will leave. 

Hikaru tilts his head back, licks deeper into his mouth.

_I’m yours_ , Kaoru wants to say. His heart clenches, aching with the truth of it. _For as long as you’ll have me, I’ll be here._

\--

"You’re sick," Claire repeats, suspiciously. "You’re not going to go to school."

"Yep," Hikaru says. 

Underneath the sheets, their hands are joined. They’ve curled their bodies together, still chilly in the mornings, Hikaru’s heartbeat pressed up close against Kaoru’s back. Kaoru isn’t really quite awake yet; the conversation comes to him gently, sifting through the miasma of his dreams.

One of these days, he supposes, he will have to let Hikaru go. 

But it doesn’t seem to be today, so that’s alright.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry everybody, I tried really hard to fit porn into this instalment but for some reason I just couldn't seem to make it work! Argh. There will be porn in the next few though, I promise. (Hopefully. Maybe. Most likely.)
> 
> Any and all feedback is much appreciated! For updates on any future fics, feel free to add me on [Tumblr](http://epistolica.tumblr.com), [LiveJournal](http://epistolic.livejournal.com), or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/#!/epistolic)! ♥


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